The House I Should Have Never Shown — And Every Mistake I Made Getting There

The House I Should Have Never Shown — And Every Mistake I Made Getting There

There's a particular kind of professional regret that comes from ignoring your own instincts. Not the small stuff. The big, loud, flashing-red-lights kind of instinct that you look directly in the face and say "nah, it'll probably be fine."

Spoiler: it was not fine.

The buyers were wonderful people — escaping the heat, the humidity, the mouse ears, and the particular madness of Florida living. They wanted a mountain getaway. Something they could use now and grow into later. Totally reasonable. Totally achievable. Murphy has exactly what they were looking for.

We looked at everything. One end of Cherokee County to the other. I showed them the good ones, the great ones, and one that I had already mentally filed under "absolutely not."

You can probably guess where this is going.

The house looked fine from the road. That was the beginning and the end of its virtues. Because when you got past the curb appeal and started asking questions — real questions — the answers were a parade of red flags in matching outfits.

The well? Belonged to the neighbor. Water rights were not conveying with the sale. The buyers would be purchasing a house with no legal access to water. The septic? Fifty feet of drain field for a three-bedroom home. For those of you keeping score at home, that is not enough. Not even close. And look — credit where it's due, the seller's agent disclosed all of this. Every word of it. In writing.

I showed it anyway.

I wrote the contract anyway.

I watched it get accepted — of course it got accepted, it was a miracle anyone made an offer — and then I held my breath through inspections like someone waiting for a verdict they already know.

The foundation delivered it. Termites. Everywhere. The kind of termite situation that makes a structural engineer go quiet in a way that is not reassuring. New flooring required. New subfloors required. The number the buyers wanted the seller to come off the price was not unreasonable given the circumstances. It was, in fact, conservative.

The sellers declined.

The deal died.

The buyers — rightfully — looked at me with the particular expression of people who had driven from Florida, fallen in love with a mountain, and then watched the whole thing collapse into a pile of sawdust and poor decisions.

We parted ways. Professionally and politely, but we parted ways.

I think about that one sometimes. Not because it haunts me — I've made peace with it — but because it taught me something I've carried into every transaction since:

When your gut tells you a house is wrong for your clients, your job is to say so. Clearly. More than once if necessary. And then hold the line.

My job isn't to find a buyer for every house. My job is to find the right house for my buyers. Those are not the same thing. They never were.

The well still belongs to the neighbor, probably.

Chrissy Sidler | 321-890-3143 | chrissy@homesmurphync.com

Sales, Swearing & Sarcasm... What more could you want in a REALTOR!?